Skip to main content

Great

Flipping through websites, I saw a blip on yahoo that said female singers make history. There was a headshot of three of them. I don't know who they are because I live under a rock, nor do I know what sort of history they made.

In that split second after I read that headline, the thought flew through my mind that I want to do something great. Not for glory or money or massive amounts of chocolate or to get my picture on yahoo with the headline "Female person makes history," but just because. I want to do something great to make the world just a little bit better than it was before.

Is that an odd desire? I don't know. So I sit here wondering if all people have the desire to do something great. And what do they do about it?

And what constitutes greatness anyway?

It's not all peace treaties and stock market victories, speed records, Hollywood contracts, and entertainment achievements.

On some days, it seems like patiently assisting with the homework of a very frustrated child constitutes greatness.

Or cooking a glorious meal. Or holding the hand of a suffering friend. Remembering to find the tap shoes your sister asked you to send to her.

Can there be greatness without love?

Comments

  1. david elzeyJanuary 8, 2010 at 10:21 AM

    as with most things, i think the desire for greatness has two polarities that people are drawn to: either the ego-centric desire to be better than others, or the human desire to leave behind a lasting legacy. the ego driven greatness is that greatness without love of anyone but the self.

    the problem isn't desiring greatness, as far as i can tell, it's assuming it can be made to happen. surely if we all desired and strove for greatness we couldn't achieve it because there'd be nothing non-great to compare it with. and of course there's always that question of greatness for one not being the same for all.

    for me the path to greatness is to do the things i feel driven to do as best as possible and to keep at it no matter what. in the end the totality of my accomplishments is the effect i am looking for, a record of achievment. by focusing on that i hope to find a little greatness as a bi-product. So we'll see.

    small steps, long journey, and all that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SoozcatJanuary 12, 2010 at 1:39 AM

    Well, there is greatness without love. But we usually call it monstrosity.

    Not very long ago I came across a quote (and I'm paraphrasing like mad here): "Most famous people are at the core utterly insignificant; most people who are truly significant are not famous." This type of significance seems connected to your concept of greatness--to do something that improves the world in some way, to bring some inner vision to life.

    I'd say the obvious thing, I suppose: let your love help you find the answer. Look at the world as it is, and allow your sense of compassion to pick out something in it you sense as wrong, or at least out of kilter. What could you do to correct it or nudge it back into place?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sky is Everywhere Contest!

I first heard Jandy Nelson read an excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere during her graduate reading at Vermont College of Fine Arts. The words absolutely sizzled from her lips, and I couldn't wait to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the publishing world caught up. When I read the finished book, I started it over and read it again. Then I bought a copy to give to my sister. (Yes, I GAVE it to my sister.) Now, thanks to a pay-it-forward contest, I am soon to have my very own copy and give away yet another copy. Casey McCormick began a pay-it-forward book contest for The Sky is Everywhere in an effort to spread the love, and to generate new sales for a talented author. Her contest inspired other contests, one of which was sponsored by Melissa Writes Fiction , and I won that contest. Yippee! So, to make good on my promise, here is my own pay-it-forward contest. Please read the rules below, because this contest is a bit different. The most important condi...
5 comments
Read more

The Greening

Sadness spreads like a sower scattering seeds. The seeds find fertile ground in her and land there, burrowing into her skin, into the deep down places where they sprout, nurtured unwittingly by blood and bone. Shoots spread forth growing both inward and outward, and she wonders if she will ever be able to root them all out. It is like pulling at a dandelion only to have stem detach from root and downy fluff fly off, enabling dozens more dandelions to take root. There is no cause for the sadness; it just is, like cold in winter, like leaves in fall, like rain in April. It sits there, within her, growing bigger each day, a pregnancy gone horribly wrong, and she feels the shame of it. But a breeze blows by, bringing different seeds, renegade seeds, hopeful seeds. They sprout in the midst of all the sadness; they choke it out. When she looks out the window today, she realizes that the world around her is greening. She decides that she will too. She will choose joy.
3 comments
Read more

I Think I'm a Grown-Up Now

I'm reposting something I wrote on my personal blog two years ago. I can laugh about it now that I don't feel the need to visit the guidance counselor's office anymore. The answer to my question was so obvious--had been obvious for years if I had taken the time to see--but apparently I had my blinders on. Or my rose-colored glasses. Or my peril-detecting sunglasses. One of them, at any rate. ***** Mid-Life Crisis The question of what I want to be when I grow up is plaguing me again. Sometimes I think I want to be like Mrs. Murray in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle---a brilliant scientist with a lab in the barn, cooking stew over a bunsen burner. But then I feel too old to go in that direction, not smart enough to be able to pick up and retain that scientific knowledge quickly enough, and not balanced enough to do it all gracefully. Inevitably, I would poison my family with an accidental slip of something into the stew. So I'm back to wondering what I hav...
4 comments
Read more